If I stop lying I'll just disappoint you
by Elone McFox
Summary: When Hermione's body is petrified by the basilisk, her mind travels back to 1972, which might not end especially well, when she has no knowledge of things she learns in the Shrieking Shack later on, so nothing stops her from befriending future foes.
1. To begin a journey

If you ever were to go looking for information on Charlotte Brown in Hogwarts' library, you would not find much, in books or in archived papers. You would find a note about her being maid of honour to one of her best friends, and becoming godmother of a newborn child in the early eighties.

If you were to go looking in the archives of the two last caretakers, you would find a great deal more.

Anything from how she accidentally spilt a swamp in the Entrance Hall when the caretaker already was in a particularly grumpy mood, to charming a group of rival-housed students into hiccoughs that lasted a week and could be heard form the Astronomy tower to the dungeons, were she spend a great deal of her time at Hogwarts.

Compare this to what you would find if you were to look up Hermione Granger in the library (as in the archives, but you might as well try the physical place). You would find so much, from gossip on her love life when she was fifteen, to her great achievements later in life, after the Battle of Hogwarts.

Any file you would find in the caretaker's office would probably be from Miss Umbridge's time at Hogwarts.

Try to find to people less alike. You wouldn't, would you?

Oh, well. Ever wondered what happened to Hermione Granger's brilliant mind when she was petrified by the basilisk? This is the story.

**Chapter one: To begin a journey**

Hermione Granger had, this very day, been very proud of herself, up until now, and that had not been without reason. She had found out what petrified students around her, and it would have been a great day, if she had not been to join the number of petrified people in the hospital wing.

She woke up lying on the floor with a mirror clutched in her hand, and a piece of paper in the other that she quickly put in her jeans pocket. A tall figure was standing next to her, looking at her as if she was slightly odd. When her eyes could focus more, she realised she knew that tall figure.

'Professor Dumbledore!' she exclaimed. 'I suppose you wonder why I'm, um, lying on the floor and not on the quidditch field, with everyone else? I mean, I know that's violating the safety rules, but I don't think we need them as much anymore, since I've... well, I think I... anyways, I was with that Ravenclaw prefect. Have you seen her?'

The headmaster smiled, but did not seem as brilliant as usual - just as mad as usual.

'I'm sorry, but I have not clue what you're talking about,' he said lightly, 'you see, there hasn't been a quidditch game her for three months - we don't usually have them in the summer when nobody's here. But what are you doing, lying around on the floor? You aren't a student here, are you? And if you are, you shouldn't arrive in a few hours.'

She stood up as fast as she could.

'We were attacked, by the monster in the Chamber of Secrets...' she tried to explain, but the look on his face politely told her to be quiet.

'Oh, well. Since you are not the girl who died the last time the Chamber was opened, I assume you are from a future where I still work at Hogwarts, since you call me "Professor Dumbledore", and you speak as if you know this place. I am not quite sure how he manages to open the Chamber again in the future... if he has not... oh, well, he was always brilliant, but in a way... oh, dear. This might be very, very interesting... but we will have to talk about this later.'

'What year is it?' she asked with a sightly panicked, high-pitched voice. She could not live in a different time than Ron and Harry - they woudl fail their second year exams so badly, and she could never see them do that.

'It is three o'clock, the first of September, nineteen hundred seventy-two,' he said calmly. 'I can assure you, whenever they find the remedy for your... accident, you'll be able to go back. Tea?'

'NINETEEENHUNDREDSEVENTYTWO?' she repeated with an even faster and higher voice, the one she usually got when she was upset. 'Please tell me you are joking.' Seeing as he was slightly mad, she wouldn't have been too surprised if he was.

'As I said, tea? Everything makes slightly more sense with a good cup. Come with me to my office and we will try to figure out what has happened and what to do next.' As of she actually knew how to figure out this little problem of hers without his help - whether to get away or cope with it in her new now.

She nodded again and followed him through the swirling corridors and occasional stairs. She realised it looked much like in her time (a few of the portraits had been moved, perhaps efter complaints from neighbouring portraits?), but most of the differences came form how peaceful and quiet it was with no students (with smells and sounds and occasional destruction, probably from the Weasley twins) - everything looked even more ancient, with was ironic considering it was slightly newer in now than in her future.

The portraits looked at her as if she was a remarkable odd person. Being there hours before everybody else would arrive was bad enough, but on top of that, she wore muggle clothes and wasn't really a student there. Her clothes made her feel odd, as she wore a orange lumberjack shirt and jeans worn so often they had the light blue colour of translucent clouds on sunny days. Even if she usually wasn't embarrassed about being muggle-born, she felt so muggle it embarrassed her.

When they arrived at a huge statue out of some stone, portraying some kind of dragon with digestion problems, Dumbledore said 'Chocolate frogs.'

'Umyesthankyou,' she answered with a surprised voice, which made him laugh as the statue shifted and made a way for them to walk into the headmaster's office.

'No, that was the password,' he said and let her into the office, where he asked her to sit down in a chair that fit her bum perfectly.

'I must say that your story is amazing, but not unbelievable. For this reason, you must never, during any circumstances, tell anyone you meet here. Even I should not know - going back in time, even a couple of hours, is usually such a large thing... it can change everything. You know so much... too much... you have to never mention your past, um, future. You must have a whole new identity, a new name... Would you be fine with that?' he asked her and sat down in an armchair a couple of sizes too big for his bum.

Everything he said made sense, and she would probably had thought of that herself, had she intended to stay here and actually interact with people. 'So I am allowed to take any name, act however I want to and look however I want to?' she said, not without a certain mischievous smile. 'But what if I was to ... well, pretend to be pure-blood? I mean, you actually have to be related to another wizard family, otherwise Id have three heads from all the inbreeding...'

Professor Dumbledore nodded happily.

'Oh, well, my mother is American. We could pretend you're related to her, and a great Northern Irish family name... Llewellyn, I suppose. Your parents are travellers, the go around the world looking for new magical specimens, to preserve them - and the muggles. Oh. Before, your parents homeschooled you, but your growing brilliance and their massive workload with a new dragon reservation collided and they sent you off her. That will also give you wonderful stories to tell your new friends. Now you will start in your... well, you can't actually start over in first year, you seem much older...'

'I am nearly thirteen, and I almost finished my second year at Hogwarts... can I go back to second year? I don't want to miss anything academically. And I'm in Gryffindor... but I don't want to be in there, this time around.'

She took a look at the old man, whose eyes told her he was much younger than his beard and wrinkles let out that he was, and took a look at the room. Harry had mentioned being there, but he had not been especially impressed byt the magical articles, but then he probably hadn't understood half of them. Not even Hermione understood half of them, and Harry would have understood even less. She loved the room for the magical feeling that made her heart beat slightly faster.

He realised she was watching the things he stored in the office, and walked up towards one of them, and grabbed it in his hand, showing her it. It was a small ball with fog in it, and she recognised it, not only from books but from personal experience.

'A remembrall!' she said, and he looked at her with an approving smile, that turned into a more serious one.

'Then that is decided. You have travelled the world with Mr and Mrs Something-or-other, and you will get the fantastic opportunity of choosing a house that fits the new you rather than the old you... and you should also decide upon a name. I won't do that for you, it wouldn't be fair since you didn't choose mine, although I am sure you would have done a much better job than my parents did. Oh, well.'

Hermione wanted a new one that was more common but not too common, and a bit intelligent, and one hit her very quickly. She tried to find another one, but it came bouncing back on her mind, and she realised it fit. 'Charlotte Brown,' she said. 'I will need a middle name too, won't I?'

The old man was slightly busy with absently stroking his fingers around a few bottles, and took quite a long time before answering her with a voice not quite present.

'Do as you like, Miss Brown.'

He continued to go through the bottles, and help a green crystal bottle against the sunlight, watching it intensely. When he put it down, he turned to her again. 'I have to ask you something,' he confessed. 'You may not know what these bottles contain, but I think you might like it. These bottles contain different personality potions, you see. If you think that would make it easier in creating this new person for yourself, you might want to try one. They alter your personality to a small extent...'

She bit her lip and tried to think clearly. If she saw Harry and Ron in the nearest future with her new personality, they would be screwed, because no way she was going to bother as much with her homework with her new personality, and they needed the old Hermione to get decent grades, not the new Charlotte.

'Is it permanent?' she asked him.

'Let me put it like this. It will affect you for however long time you want it to affect you,' he said calmly.

With a light movement with his wand, he managed to make a table appear out of what Hermione thought was thin air, but it seemed not to be just any old table, but one that had been loved through the years, by the looks of it. It was in some dark wooden colour and had marks from late night readings: a burnmark from a candle, and spilt afternoon tea. He managed to put the two dozen small bottles on the table with another movement with hsi want, even sorted after colour (from a dark green one to one in a clear pink crystal imitation).

He walked towards the table and pointed at the different bottles. 'This is every quality you would want. Naivety,' (he pointed at the pink bottle, thankfully with the hand not holding his wand), 'oh, charisma - I'm very fond of that one, got quite an overdose once...' he said, slightly scatterbrained, pointing at a deep red bottle with a content that seemed much more like mud than a liquid, 'and, here is malice, and oh, inquisitiveness.'

Hermione nodded, as it was the easiest thing to do (was there any potion against nodding too much?) and rose from her bum-fitted chair to inspect the bottles. Half of them had labels that said exactly what they were supposed to do, but half of them had strange rhymes on them, that she couldn't even try to understand.

'I promised you tea, didn't I?' Professor Dumbledore said smoothly, and with a small whip with his wand, a large tea cup appeared on the table. He went towards one of his bookshelves, and with some kind of magic, he managed to open a secret compartment there. 'The most important things must always be the most carefully hidden ones,' he said, and took out a can and put it on the table. 'What do you want? Tea, coffee, pumpkin juice, water, hot cocoa?'

She murmured tea, and he poured it out from the can, and from the smell of it, it was simple Earl Grey tea. He put the can back into the secret compartment and closed it, before going back to her.

'Now, all the fun starts. Take whatever you want to be, and be it.'

She knew she wanted to be someone as unHermionish as possible.

'Selflessness, pretty much - loads of charisma, can I have the whole bottle? Oh, lots of naivety...'

'Miss Brown, I told you you could add any quality in any quantity,' (he sniggered at his own joke), 'put pour it in the cup for yourself.'

She though he probably wanted her to do this just to keep her quiet. When she looked at him, she could sense a few streaks of red in the grey beard.

He walked back to his desk and sat down in a more bum-fitted chair, and started to write something, probably her enrollment at the school... and her robes, so she felt free to add anything to her tea.

She begun by pouring down half of the naivety and the innocence, along with a drop of the self-confidence (she supposed she had enough, really, but she wouldn't mind a bit more to those blue evenings when everything was wrong) and the whole bottle of charisma. She nearly added a bit if the 'intelligence', but realised this was dangerous stuff - even the smallest amount of more intelligence could give her an over-dose.

Into the cup, she poured a bit of the substance labeled to give her better memory, and emptied three more bottles in it: 'compassion', 'knight errantry' (with the 'k' added later with blue ink instead of the green one), and one that only said 'attention'. To that she also added most of the liquid that would give her 'credibility'.

'I'm done,' she announced. 'Am I just to... drink it?'

He looked up from his important, Charlotte-related papers, and nodded encouraging.

She drank the whole cup without putting it down once, and it gave her a nice, warm feeling in her chest. The tea was not yet cooled down, despite all not quite hot liquids that had been poured in it, and it tasted nice, soft in some way. Of course, she supposed the cup was a enchanted to be able to hold a little more than an muggle cup of that size would hold.

'So, Miss Brown, do you want me to alter you appearance, or will that do just fine?'

'My appearance is perfect,' she said, since she had always been too afraid to even pierce her ears. Change her looks with magic was a small step further than that, and besides, even though she disliked parts of her, they were parts of her, even the new, improved her... and her parents would kill her if she changed her big front teeth.

Professor Dumbledore looked outside through the window.

'I will see to your robes and anything you need. You have a few hours left until the others students arrive... you could spend them in the library.

Hermione Granger would have said yes, but Charlotte Brown wouldn't.

'I think I'll just go out for a bit of fresh air.'

* * *

AN: This was something I wrote once from an idea I got. This is the translated and improved version, so feel free to review. (:


	2. To sort things out

**Chapter two: To sort things out**

Like any other scared-to-death first-year, Hermione stood in line with the others and waited for the sorting, which wasn't too much of a sacrifice, since her new surname started with a 'B', and there were only a couple of eleven-year olds before her, including a blond girl with ponytails and an 'Aubrey, Bertram' to Hufflepuff, and some other people that were standing in the line, giggling nervously.

After 'Black, Regulus,' Professor McGonagall called out 'Brown, Charlotte!' from the list. Hermione did not react at first, but then she realised Professor McGonagall meant her, and quickly made her way to the stool and sat down, letting her former (or future) head of house slip the Sorting Hat over her bushy hair, which was the only thing that kept the Hat from covering her eyes, too.

'Oh, it's _you_,' she heard the Hat comment, which felt very odd. 'The Headmaster told me 'bout you. Didn't want Gryffindor, did you? Apparently you've been there before... and, well, Ravenclaw? Allright, allright, not that. Oh, well... you'd find Hufflepuff too... well, too everyday. What about Slytherin?'

Hermione would never even consider Slytherin for herself (hint: blood), but for Charlotte Brown, she knew it would work out just fine, which the Hat took as a 'yes', and called out 'Slytherin!'. The people at the table started cheering (cheerfully, her head noted, but she realised how stupid that sounded).

She walked clumsily, almost tripping on her own feet, to the table, and sat down next to a dark-haired boy with a wide but slightly nervous smile.

'Hi, I'm Regulus,' he greeted her with, and she gave a wide smile in return.

'I'm Charlotte,' she said, and her heart made a nice little jump at how great it felt to make a new impression on people.

Another boy, with darker hair and Roman nose sat in front of Regulus, and when he looked at Charlotte, she realised she recognised him. 'Severus. Snape,' he said as an introduction.

She realised he couldn't remember her (well, duh) and flashed a smile. 'Charlotte. Brown,' she replied in the same style.

As the sorting went on, a girl with long, red hair ('Hi, I'm Elena Dagbworth) took place next to Hermione, and Hermione noticed how Severus watched her quickly with a look that Hermione was too busy being excited about everything else to figure out, but he just continued discussing something with Regulus, who seemed happy to have someone to speak to.

Hermione turned to the girl. 'Hi. I'm Charlotte. Isn't this just amazing?' she said, pointing at the candles in the ceiling.

'Oh, well, I guess so,' Elena said, slightly reserved.

'Oh, that's so simple magic,' Snape said. 'What are you, muggles? They say it was Salazar the Great himself who came up with it.'

'I know,' Hermione said (even though she had promised herself to be less Hermioneish). 'That's in-'

'Hogwarts, A History,' Regulus completed her sentence with.

'But that book is soo long. Why have you read it?' Elena complained.

'Well, if you are stuck in two weeks of non-stop rain in the middle of a forest – not a British, small one, but a huge, Scandinavian one – in a caravan with your parents, you don't have much choice – even comics loose their charm after a while,' Hermione said, telling a bit of the story she'd come up with herself.

'A caravan?' a girl with nice, light-brown hair and a slightly weak look (which Hermione didn't think was anything good, despite the ideal thinness of the society... which Hermione couldn't remember if the society liked in the seventies. That was after Twiggy, was it not?).

'It's like a wagon, with a small house on it. Muggles have them becaus they're more comfortable than tents, and they drag them by car, and my parents and I have lived in it since it's been so comfortable when we've been out in the world. My parents are discoverers, you see, looking for creatures and types of magic in the world. Tribes and stuff.'

She really, badly hoped it sounded at least a bit convincing.

'That's so cool,' Regulus said in awe. 'Isn't it, Severus?'

Snape (_Severus_, Hermione corrected herself) just nodded, his eyes and mind set on something else, which Hermione couldn't see.

'Did you hear? The Chudley Canons changed their motto,' Regulus said, slightly over enthusiastic.

Hermione smiled a bit from how much he reminded her of Ron.

'Isn't that the quidditch team that never wins?' she asked. 'I mean, it is a quidditch team, right?'

A dozen people around her fell silent at her words, and Regulus watched her with serious concern for her sanity.

'You don't follow The League?' he asked her, as if it was a serious religious cult he was part of.

'Oh, well, me and my parents have kind of moved around in different parts of the world until now, and I've never really had the interest or so in keeping up with that. You see, I was home schooled because of how – oh, it sounds_ so _stupid – we moved around, but when my mum and dad had taught me everything they remembered from school that was important and they got so much work to do with this new dragon reservation, I was sent off to here, a year too late. So I'm kind of... _behind_.'

'I could tell,' Regulus said, as if not knowing stuff about the worst team in the leage made you stupid, but not really having a proper first year of school was just fine.

'Does that mean you're going to be in the second year?' Snape (_Severus_, she reminded herself) asked. Hermione tried to act like they'd never met, which they hadn't... yet.

'I suppose so,' she said and shrugged. 'Professor Dumbledore sort of checked what I knew and what I didn't, and he seemed to think my previous education had been just fine.' In her mind, she wondered, too, which year she'd be placed in.

'They let you do magic, for real, with a wand?' Elena asked, quite impressed.

'No, I did it without,' Hermione said, but kept her voice neutral, as to not reveal the joke in her voice.

Elena's face gave away that she was even more surprised now.

'You could do that?'

'Most people can make magic without wands,' Severus (She managed!) said, almost as coldly as Hermione remembered (although the Snape she knew had already broken his voice... or he had been punched in the face too many times).

'Elena, I was just joking,' she explained. 'But you said they'd changed motto?'

Despite she only asked Regulus to change subject (her lie didn't quite feel comfortable yet), she actually felt slightly interested in the topic. Well, there's a first for everything.

'Yes,' Regulus said. 'But I can't remember their new one...'

'"Let's all just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best",' Hermione said.

'What?'

'It's the new motto.'

'But you didn't know anything about quidditch.'

'I know something, just not everything.'

She couldn't well say, 'one of my friends spends a lot of time talking about them', because he didn'ty exist yet, did he?

'What's your favourite teams, then?' Elena asked.

'Montrose Magpies,' Regulus said, as if it was a very nearly stupid question. 'But I'm still slightly bitter about Hamish MacFarlan quitting.'

Hermione just nodded, but was saved by the absolute silence that has spread around the Hall. Professor Dumbledore had rose, and his face carried the widest smile Hermione had seen in years.

'I should wish for you to be quite for just a moment,' he said with that voice he had that sounded a bit like church bells. Hermione didn't doubt that, despite him speaking at his normal sound level, every single person in the Great hall could hear him as if he was sitting as close to them as Regulus sat to Hermione.

Professor Dumbledore's massive voice made everyone, the most noticable being Professor McGonagall next to him, change their posture to the better, to seem more respectable (the teachers probably did it to scare the newcomers).

'My dear students. A new year at Hogwarts, and for some of you, a year at Hogwarts. I should like to use this moment to introduce our new teacher in Defence Against the Dark Arts. Professor Trieste!'

An applause followed, and a woman with dark hair and skin, aged between twenty and seventy, stood up, bowed, and sat down.

'She has taken on this admirable assignment, and I hope that you will all show her your utter respect.'

There were only a few students that actually sniggered at Professor Dumbledore's speech, at that were those newcomes that had not yet developed the respect for their headmaster. Most of the newcomers still looked really scared, as if they though they might be kicked out of Hogwarts for saying something wrong, and the other students knew he was the wizard equivalent of a mad but brilliant scientist.

'But then I can't see any reason for why anyone would show anything but utter respect for any of our staff, can I?' he said, and most people laughed, even the ones that started a second after everyone else, thinking it would be disrespectul (or less than utterly respectful) to laugh at this joke.

'And now, for more serious business. I think most of you have heard of this new, well, movement. There is a man who has killed a lot of people in our direct or indirect environment, a man who calls himself Lord Voldemort,' (collective shiver), 'and he might be among us. Not by himself, but with his followers, his supporters. We must all remember to stick together.'

His voice did not sound like church bells, more humble now.

Hermione thought quickly. She was now a part of the Slytherin house, a house very proud, but with a certain reputation... at least in her future. Hadn't someone said that Slytherins were all evil? Probably some really jealous person, she thought as her Slytherin pride made her heart feel a litte warmer, but still. She hated her prejudices, but some of her new friends might turn out to be Voldemort fans in the future.

'I should also inform that Mr Pringle retired this year from his post as Hogwarts' caretaker. His place is filled up with Mr Filch, who I hope you will also show great respect. Mr Pringle's old age – not, in any ways, a group of students and their actions, was the reason for his retirement, but he remarked that the list over banned artifacts over the summer doubled its number. Most of those are, of course, things you would never bring here, but apparently someone did, and yes, Mr Black, I am talking about you,' he said and looked someone at the Gryffindor table.

Hermione looked at Regulus. The surname was rather common, but they might still be related. Regulus, however, barely moved.

'Of course, now is the time for the part you have all been waiting for, the incredible food. Let's eat.'

Hermione looked down at the plates that now were filled with food. Most of the new students let out whispers in awe, and she felt very aware of how she didn't, when she was expected to be so impressed by everything, it being her first time there, officially.

She took a bit of each paté, and smiled at Regulus when she realised he was doing exactly the same thing.

'So that's all you know about quidditch?' he said and tucked some food into his mouth.

'Well, there are four balls, seven players, six goal posts that have been used since 1883, before that they used baskets... right?' she said and looked at him. Despite not quite being Hermione Granger any more, it still felt good to do what had made Ron call her a know-it-all once a day the last year and a half. Regulus reminded her so much of Ron, it nearly hurt a bit, thinking about Ron and Harry.

'Oh, so you do know a bit.'

'I... um, I read it in a book,' she said, not wanting to reveal the title, as she didn't know whether it had been published yet... which might lead to very stupid consequences.

'I'll learn you all I know,' he promised.

'You've seen the Jungle Book?' she said, amazed.

He nodded. 'It's not exactly socially accepted, but...'

'So what?' she said, pushing away a lock of hair from her face.

Good bye Hermione, hi Charlotte.


	3. To make friends among foes

_A/N: I'd like to thank everyone who's put this on their story alert. This is the last chapter I've translated, the rest of them will be new. Reviews are appreciated, as always. My brain and my characters (especially Charlotte/Hermione) is telling me different things about where to go with this story, but if you have anything you'd want, don't be afraid to tell me. I don't bite, I'm not a vampire._

**Chapter three: To make friends among foes**

Hermione and Severus were just in time for their first lesson, a double hour in Transfiguration. They were even a bit early, as it was Professor McGonagall's lesson and hell hath no fury like Professor McGonagall annoyed. At least hell hath no ability to take away house cup points from them on their first day.

Besides, Hermione didn't want to miss this lesson, despite having taken it before, or after, and Severus actually took his time to show her they way, as she was supposedly lost in a castle she'd never set her foot in.

In the crossroad of a corridor, by a statue she didn't know the name of (it wasn't in _Hogwarts, A History_), they met a friend of Severus, who also had the double Transfiguration lesson. Severus did not seem too thrilled about introducing his friend to her, but he'd promised his friend to meet her there, and Hermione (well, Charlotte) to guide her to her lesson, so she had to follow him there, too.

'Hi! I'm Lily Evans. I'm in Gryffindor,' she said cheerfully.

She had hair, redder and less orange than Ron's, and she had green eyes, like Harry, and she had a bright smile, like Lavender, and she made Hermione feel slightly more at home at Hogwarts, which she never would have thought to be possible, and she made Hermione think about that life that seemed a bit blurry now.

'You were sorted yesterday, weren't you? But you have Transfiguration now, too? Oh, so you're going to be in the second year? How does that work out?'

'Home schooling,' Hermione said. 'Charlotte Brown.'

She fixed her gaze on Lily and tried to go through her mind. Wasn't there a Lily Evans in the history books? She couldn't remember. But, of course, the wizarding community wasn't huge, and she could have met her in one way or other.

In any case, Lily Evans was the kind of person that made people around her feel very happy. She quickly wondered whether she would have felt that way if she hadn't had the personality potions... it felt as if her whole body, soul and mind had been affected. People seemed to react differently now than when she was in Harry and Ron's time, and that seemed weird, as she'd actually been best friends with the most famous wizard alive, in that time.

Maybe, she thought, she was just experiencing a bit of time travelling jet lag.

'We have around fifteen and a half minutes until the lessons starts. It's Transfiguration with Professor McGonagall, the witch who called out your names yesterday, when you were sorted,' Lily informed her, making a gesture with her shoulder, telling them to go the way Hermione sometimes used together with Harry and Ron.

Severus walked slightly faster than Hermione, and Lily adjusted to his speed, which made Hermione walk behind them, which she really didn't mind, as they made a nice, empty trail for her to walk in, while they had to make their way through the crowd that Hermione earlier had missed.

Lily and Severus spoke quickly and about things Hermione did not know about, which would have bothered Hermione, but Charlotte didn't care.

'… I told them, if they're bullying people after their looks, they're imbeciles. Which they are, but they can't see it, but they don't get it themselves. Because apparently she's slightly overweight, and overweight people don't have feelings or something, they seem to think,' Lily told Severus in a voice that revealed her fury. 'And she isn't even overweight, she's slightly chubby but she's normal!'

Hermione was almost shocked at how Lily Evans could be so enraged.

'Don't be bothered,' Severus said, in a sincere voice, trying to cool her down, or cheer her up. 'They're slightly double standarded, I suppose. They do hang out with that Petty boy, you know.'

They came to a place were a corridor parted in two, and Lily, in a slightly bossy way, pushed Severus, who was on her right side, into the right path.

Hermione eyed, not completely without jealousy, Lily's dark red satchel out of corduroy, while trying to find out something to contribute to the conversation with.

'Um, every house has a Quidditch team, right?' Hermione asked Lily as she walked up next to her, since this corridor was slightly emptier. 'How can you join it?'

Lily ans Severus both looked at Hermione with similar incredulous looks.

'They have try-outs, I suppose...' Severus said, lingering. 'It's not really our thing.'

Lily agreed. 'It's not like we don't like Quidditch, but it's … well, only really good players get on the team, and they really brag about it later... or, in some cases, even before they're on the team... or even especially good.'

'Oh... okay,' Hermione said, walking slightly faster up the stairs.

Lily smiled with sympathy, but as Hermione was at the top of the stairs and naturally had her back facing Lily, so she pretended not to have seen it.

When they walked into the classroom, Professor McGonagall greeted them with an abnormally cheerful 'good morning!', and it made Hermione think about how much younger she seemed now than in the future (which wasn't too logical or anything), as a group of boys came tumbling into the classroom.

'I'm sorry, Professor McGonagall, someone had thrown a curse on a corridor in the dungeon... and we couldn't pass it, you know,' one of them said, trying to charm her (with his smile, not with magic) as he and his two friends took place next to a boy in the back with sand coloured hair and and tired smile.

A smile that Hermione had seen on Professor McGonagall's face a couple of times before, now spread over her lips, and she sighed.

'Oh, dear Mr Black, you mean you simply had to pass through the basement, to come to my lesson? You really are lost.'

'Exactly,' a black-haired boy with glasses filled in.

'Harry,' Hermione mumbled under her breath. As she looked on him, she noticed many differences, but the similarities were still shocking.

Lily and Severus exchanged a silent whispering conversation, and Severus turned to Hermione and explained. 'Those three, with Lupin who already had arrived, are always late or up to something. They're from Gryffindor... Black, Pettigrew and... well, Potter,' Severus added, with a hate in his voice that Hermione recognised to well. 'You do not want to meet them.'

Lily laughed silently. 'Just ignore them. They're convinced everyone loves them, which makes them better that everyone. Potter is the one who believes he'll be on the Quidditch team this year... he died a little inside or something when he realised he couldn't be on it his first year. That's why his heart is so cold.'

'Quidditch?' Hermione repeated. 'Does it make people idiots? 'It's just a sport. And I'm probably better than he is, anyways.'

'Well,' Lily whispered, as the teacher continued to talk to the late Gryffindor students, 'it's not like muggle sports, where it's only boys that get any recognition for it, but... well. Some people have the idiot potential before, too.'

They turned to listen to Professor McGonagall, who had started to lecture them about the importance of what they were going to do this year, and what was expected of them. ('Remember, it is only four years until you are to take your OWLs – ordinary wizarding levels!') Then she called out their names, about thirty ones, and Hermione didn't forget to say 'Here!' when 'Brown, Charlotte,' was called.

When they tried the very simple spells later, Hermione was the only one who was able to do it on the first try. Lily was able to do it on her second try, and Severus on his second and a half, and then one or two of the Gryffindor boys managed (but that wasn't until after five minutes or so), until the rest of the class had all managed it, and their double lesson had finished.

'Charlotte!'

Regulus called her name when she arrived in the Great Hall for lunch. He had even made a place for her at the part of the Slytherin table that was otherwise full. His call attracted a few stares that she could feel burn her clothes, when she walked hastily through the room, dropped her new bag on the floor and took her place.

The bag, just as her school books, clothes, a couple of regular clothes, potion ingredients, parchment and everything else she could possibly need or want.

Charlotte Brown was now also in possession of a completely new wand, made out of oak with one unicorn straw, about twelve inches long, personally delivered by Mr Ollivander, she'd been told, and it had fit her perfectly.

Elena, who sat opposite Regulus, smiled at Hermione, but had her mouth filled with the vegetable gratin to say anything else.

A boy with reddish-brown hair stretched his arm over Elena's face to fetch the salt, despite it being easier to use Wingardium Leviosa or Accio, and his eyes fell on Hermione.

'Hi, you. You're Scarlett, right?' he said, mindlessly pouring salt over his roasted potatoes.

'Charlotte,' she corrected him.

'Right,' he said, put down the salt and started abuse his food with ketchup instead. 'I had Transfiguration, too. I'm a second year, too.'

'And you're still sitting here with first-years and generally retarded people?' Regulus asked, taking up the salt and pouring it over his own food, too.

'I'm Arkie,' the boy said. 'Alderton.'

'Regulus Black, Elena Dagworth, Charlotte Brown,' Hermione said.

'We have Transfiguration after lunch,' Elena said, distracted.

'Oh, don't worry. You'll do so easy things, like turning nails to matches,' Hermione said reassuring.

'How would you know?' Regulus said, slightly surprised.

Hermione shrugged. 'It's like the easiest thing to do.'

Arkie took up his own timetable from a pocket somewhere, and when he had unfolded it, it looked surprisingly flat.

'We have Potions with Hufflepuff now,' he told Charlotte. 'That's great, 'cause we'll get loads of house points. Slughorn, the Potions Master, is our head of house, and he loves being partial.'

Hermione nodded and poured up some potatoes to her plate.

Of course it couldn't have been a Professor Snape for Potions, she realised, but she hadn't thought about it.

'Well, Potions are fun,' she said, sounding in her head like a slightly too happy puppy.

'Eat up, so we can go,' Arkie said, touching his hair, that immediately rose straight up, despite being quite long. His hair looked a bit like those twisted macarones.

'I haven't even started,' she marked.

'Oh. I was just kidding.'

Regulus started talking about his first two lessons, Flying and Charms, and Hermione listened to him without interrupting, as she ate her potatoes with salmon, cashew nuts and a sauce made out of spinach and blue cheese. She'd never tried it before, but it tasted really good, and she let her mind wander off to petty things while enjoying her meal.

She made small remarks that made Elena laugh and the rest of them look amused, and she felt happy, as she took a look at her new friends. Maybe this age wasn't so bad.

'We have an hour before our next lesson. Should we go out and play cards?' she suggested. 'Um, well, if someone has a deck.'

'I have,' Elena said.

'I have one,' Regulus informed her

'Me too,' Arkie said.

'I think I have one too.'

The last one was Elena again.

'Well... let's go out, then? It's a bright, non-rainy day. Let's not miss anything.'

Carpe diem, she thought for herself.

'Nah,' Regulus said. 'Why not sit in the cold, slightly damp dungeons. It's not like anyone needs fresh air or something.'

'Hush,' she said and shook her head, kicking him gently.

'Aouch!' he said. Apparently she was stronger than she'd ever given herself credit for. Her strength had always been in her brains, not her brawn.

'Regulus?'

An much older girl, tall, lean and blonde, had appeared next to them. She looked a bit like Galadriel in Hermione's illustrated copy of Lord of the Rings. Her skin was milky white despite it still being summer, her hair had an almost silver blonde shade, and her eyes were almost grey in their blueness. The shade of grey was enhanced by her simple, textile headband in the exact same colour, that held her long hair in place.

'Oh, hi, sis,' he said.

Sis? Hermione thought. They didn't look very much like each other.

'You made it to Slytherin,' she said, and a small smile made its way to her mouth, but not her eyes. 'Unlike that brother of yours.'

'Don't compare us,' he said sharply, the smile on his face completely gone. 'Um, Cissy, this is my friends. Charlotte, Elena, um, Arkie...'

'Hi', Hermione said in her most Charlottish manner. Narcissa smiled briefly at her, but it felt more like a well-mannered than meant smile.

'Friends, this is Narcissa, Cissy or just Ciss... she's my favourite cousin,' Regulus said, and he seemed rather proud of her, actually.

'That's because I'm the prettiest. Me and Bella aren't really... comparable,' Narcissa said, shaking her head.

'What about-' Regulus started, but Narcissa's blue eyes suddenly looked like ice crystals, and he looked a bit like she'd burned (or frozen) him with her eyes. 'Oh, never mind,' he grunted.

'Bye, Regulus,' she said, bowed down to kiss his cheek, and walked away to her friends at the other end of the table.

'Wow,' Hermione could hear Elena whisper under her breath. 'She's amazing.'

'She's part veela, isn't she?' Hermione asked.

'No, we're pure-blood wizards in our family,' Regulus said. '_And _humans.'

Right. The blood thing was of great importance here. She had forgotten all about that.

Arkie's mind and eyes was still focused on the other end of the Slytherin table.

'Oh, well. Cards, was it?

'Charlotte Brown!'

'Here, Professor Slughorn,' Charlotte said.

The Potions Master, who seemed a lot more cheerful than the one Hermione was used to, continued to call out all the names. The Slytherin students sat in the front tables, and Charlotte sat next to Arkie, and at their table Severus also had taken his place, and a mouse-haired girl she couldn't remember the name of.. The Hufflepuff students didn't seem quite as thrilled about the subject as the ones from Charlotte's house, but she could understand that: having Potions with Snape's own house students hadn't been too much fun, despite it actually being a great subject. Yeah, and he'd hated her and her friends more than usual, too.

'So, well, dear students. Today we're going to do a little fun thing. A small... love potion!'

The teacher seemed slightly mad, but she did not mind. His hair was straw-coloured, showed clear balding tendencies (rather, his bald head showed a few hair tendencies) and had clear grey streaks in it. His moustache made him look a bit like one of those seals, and he was almost shorter than some of the older girls Charlotte had made acquaintance with.

Charlotte raised her hand.

'Yes, Miss... New One?' Professor Slughorn asked, smiling gently.

'Brown. Are those really ethical?' she asked.

'Oh, of course,' he said, but he did not seem so certain. 'Now, you are going to work individually. We are not going to make Amortentia, but a slightly weaker version of it, called Dite's Draught and naturally, I can't let you keep them after the lesson. I have some responsibility as your teacher, naturally.'

He looked at all the students, as if to remind them about how serious he was about his moral responsibility as their teacher.

'Well. Page sixty-seven, everybody. Any ingredient you don't have is in the cupboard. You have thirty minutes.

Hermione turned to page sixty-seven and read through the instructions twice. The only thing she realised she didn't have was Ashwinder eggs, so she quickly went to the small cupboard, choosing the one that looked like it was in the best condition. On her way back she bumped in to one or two other students that had started making their potion; the rest of them were still reading the instructions.

She started boiling the small ingredients she threw in: a small bit of her own spit, two whole black beetles, three sliced caterpillars and half a chopped-up flobberworm. She was very grateful she wouldn't have to actually drink it (because Professor Slughorn should never allow something like that to happen, should he?) and added the Ashwinder egg.

She didn't know if she should be glad that she just had eaten, which made her less inclined to feel sick, or if she should, since she might start spewing anyways, and now she actually had something in her stomach to get up.

The last thing she did, was to add a bit of ginger to it.

The people at her table worked in silence: she was trying to do her best and not spew, Severus was working equally hard and Arkie, between them, tried to prevent his cauldron from melting. Every other minute or so, Hermione whispered tips for his potion, but instead of her clear, green liquid, his looked a bit like orange juice. She helped him add a small amount of flobberworm juice to it, and it got nearly the right colour, but not the right translucency, but at least he would pass, hopefully.

She took a look at Severus' cauldron, and her jaw nearly dropped. She thought her potion had been perfect, but when she saw his, she realised her could barely pass in comparison with his.

Oh, well.

As the time was up, Professor Slughorn personally took a small amount of each person's potion and emptied the cauldrons directly, making small, nice remarks at everyone that wasn't completely useless, and when he came to their table, looked shocked, in a good way, over the results that both Charlotte and Severus produced (and a 'good work, Mr Alderton').

'Oh, I see. Five points each to Slytherin, I believe. Miss Brown, this is good. You've never taken proper Potions lessons before? Good, very good. And, yes, Mr Snape, brilliant as always. What a pity you're not having Potions with Gryffindor this year, is it not? You and Miss Evans in the same classroom... what a joy. Oh, well, you can all go.'

Well, she might have become Charlotte, but not being the top of the class still stung a bit in her heart.


	4. To make it an everyday life

_A/N: Hi everyone. I'm, obviously, trying to find my voice of writing here, and I know exactly how I want some things to go, but I'm not sure how to take them there. I'm still very much open for wishes about character/story archs, characters to be introduced and characters to get more time to shine. This is one of the new chapters. _

_Love, Alicia._

**Chapter four: To make it an everyday life**

September and most of October flew away. There was less and less Hermione, more and more Charlotte. Professor Slughorn approached her about a 'Slug Club,' and both she and Regulus joined, but it wasn't for her brain. She was still regularly top of the class, except for Severus in Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Lily Evans in some of the subjects they shared, but not all of them.

A small voice in the back of Charlotte's mind told her it wasn't because of Hermione's intelligence she managed to get so much appreciation from the teachers, but because she'd already done the things already.

As much as she enjoyed the presence of her new friends, including Elena, Arkie and Regulus, and managed to play the social game called popularity to land in a pretty comfortable place, she missed a lot of things from her other life. She couldn't remember much of it (it felt too much like one of those dreams you wake up from and feel a bit sad when you realise that that alternative version of reality isn't real), but she hadn't forgotten that the stories she told them weren't real, and that her parents never would be able to discuss the new dragon reservation she'd told her friends she was so proud of.

She hadn't talked much to Severus, but they shared all their lessons, so they saw a lot of each other. She found him strange, and was even a bit terrified of him, since he seemed to know more about magic of darker kinds than she could possibly imagine. Despite introducing her to Lily, he didn't seem too thrilled that Charlotte and Lily actually nearly became distant friends, the way Gryffindors and Slytherins could be if they pretended it didn't happen. Lily, of course, had no house prejudices, and Hermione didn't either, not really, but still...

The only person she got to know that she could look up to was Narcissa. Narcissa was intelligent, but she didn't flaunt it, and she might seem ice-cold on the surface, but she was so much more than that. She always kept a distance from people, but she knew everyone in the entire school. Or, well at least she knew about them. If she went as far as to think they were good enough to speak to, that was another matter.

Charlotte sat in Regulus' bed, her back comfortably resting at his big, fluffy pillows. Her thick socks had made it possible for her to walk through the entire Slytherin common room without her shoes on, despite it being the worst November weather she'd encountered in a very long time. Technically she wasn't sure if the weather made any change to the conditions in the dungeons, as they always seemed damp and chilly, but when it was also cold outside, it wasn't as much a cooling breeze as it was during the hot Indian summer in September.

Regulus, too, was sitting at the bed, but at he end where his feet usually were. Charlotte had refused to sit there, since his fight weren't exactly the nicest smelling part of him. (His hair was, when washed.)

Her thick, brown hair, now cut by Regulus' charming cousin, was still wet from the Quidditch practice they had had in the morning, just she and Regulus, as she had been chosen as the reserve chaser, making her feel proud. It wasn't a real position in the team, but at least she might get to play... and nobody would yell at her for being on the court when she wasn't supposed to be there.

(Regulus had been ecstatic: she was probably the first first-year to play in a team, even if just as a reserve, in a century. She didn't like the idea of him thinking her a first-year: she liked the idea of him having a huge respect for her due to the difference in their age more.)

Nobody else was in his dormitory, and they were both eating a box of chocolate he'd gotten from his mother. The box even had their family crest on it, which did impress Charlotte. Just a little bit. She liked the details.

And despite everything that they had in common, it was what they didn't have in common that gave them most pleasure.

And yes, I'm talking about the fact that Regulus preferred white and dark chocolate, while Charlotte preferred the milk chocolate, which made everyone perfectly happy.

'You should come with me during Christmas. It's in London, our house. My parents will love you – they'll give you a chance because you're in Slytherin and pure-blood, and they'll love you because you're so nice and sweet and the daughter they would have loved to have.'

'Love me?'

Regulus looked down in the chocolate box. 'They will love the fact that I have normal friends, which they so desperately tried to force my brother into. He abandoned all the friends they'd introduced him to, you know? Well, except for Potter, but he's in Gryffindor, too. All the friends we'd have in common.'

She heard that he had a little trouble speaking, maybe it was from that feeling where the throat hurt from pushing back tears, she didn't know.

'I could befriend him... oh, wait, no. It's that Sirius, right? I despise him. He's a bit of a bully. Did you hear what they did to Elena? Oh, right, you did. I told you. I also told you about the curse I revenged her with.'

He nodded and made a small bit och chocolate levitate up in the air, with his wand, but he didn't manage to make it float all the way to him. It fell down on the bed, but he managed to take it with his hand and put it in his mouth.

'I should teach you how to do that properly,' she told him. She crawled across the bed and took his hand, the one he held the wand with. 'I can't believe you haven't learned this yet. Okay, drop the wand, or give it to me.'

He did as she said, giving her his wand and looking at her.

'Okay, say after me. Win-GAR-dee-yum Leh-vee-OH-sah.'

'Wing-gar-di-yum Levy-ow-SAH.'

'It's Lev-ee-OH-sah, not Levy-ow-SAH,' she said.

And then she felt that pain in the throat, too, and she shut her mouth, trying not to cry. She could hear, as if from a distance, that he repeated the spell again, now getting it correct.

'Charlie?' Regulus asked. 'What do I do now?'

She finally looked at him, and shook her body. 'Um, you wave and point at the chocolate. Um, wait.'

She carefully took one of the white chocolate pieces and put it on the bed covers. She didn't want to ruin any nice, normal chocolate if he failed miserably.

She gave him the wand, but kept her own hand at his wand-hand, clutching it hard, and slowly helped him with the movement that he was supposed to do. 'Okay. Wingardium Leviosa,' she said, and as the chocolate rose, she made his hand move, in order to make the chocolate move. He managed to catch it with his free hand and put it in his mouth.

'Great,' she said, putting another chocolate on the bed now, but a dark one this time.. 'Now, do it by yourself.'

He concentrated, said the words and turned his hand the way she'd taught him, and after every single bit of chocolate that wasn't milk chocolate was eaten or missing in action, he'd mastered it.

He was almost panting with mental exhaustion, but he smiled at her. 'Thanks.'

'It's nothing,' she said and shrugged. 'Tell mer about your brother.'

'Sirius? He's... oh. I dunno. I hate the things he does, he hates the things I do, but... we're brothers, right? Brothers help each other.'

'I wouldn't know. I'm an only child. But I've met people that became like my brothers. One was named Harry, and he was... you won't meet him, I think, but he's like... destined for something big. I can feel it. The other one was... Ron. He... well. He's... Oh, I dunno. He's a bit socially clumsy, I suppose. Ginger.'

...

Regulus walked with brisk steps through a corridor on the third floor, when he saw his brother. The smile on his face faded away, and his steps lost life, as he silently stopped, as his speed faded at the same rate as his smile. When they both finally stood still, there were a gap between them, the length of Sirius' twelve year old body.

'Sirius.'

'Hello, brother.'

The two of them stared intensively at each other. Regulus had never seen his brother alone in school before; he had always been accompanied by his friends.

Nobody said a word.

'Sirius?'

Regulus almost felt a bit scared, seeing the face off his brother.

'Why do you hate me? I'm your brother, not our parents. Just because you all of sudden got so popular, you think you can treat everyone at home like they're not worth anything, especially the ones that haven't done anything to you. Especially me.'

Sirius' face softened just a bit.

'Sirius? I miss you.'

_You're eleven, not three. Be a man, don't cry. He's not worth it. But brothers are supposed to be there for each other, right?_

'Regulus?' Sirius asked. 'Mother sent the invitations for Christmas. I'm not coming home for it, you know that? I'm going to the Potters'. Mother was actually rather okay with that. I have even spoken to Andy. She...'

'Andy. She's having a baby, isn't she? She and that Muggle.'

Sirius sighed, looking at me like I was a small parasite. 'You are so much like them, you know?'

'I'm what?' Regulus froze even more. He didn't like this. In every way he had always been very fond of his brother, comparing himself to him, just like their parents had. The only thing that had made their parents actually care a small bit about Regulus, was the small, rebellious tendencies his brother had shown: being friends with half-bloods, and more importantly, being sorted into Gryffindor. They claimed Slytherin wasn't a house, it was a quality marking, and apparently, Sirius hadn't been good enough.

'You call him "Muggle". He's not a Muggle, just not pure-blood – also known as pretentious and inbred – and that makes him less worth in some people's minds. You're apparently one of them.'

'I'm not,' he snapped. 'I'm just... I'm just not ready to stand up against them when I have no friends they hate, that won't turn against me.

He took one step towards his older brother.

'But we're brothers, right? We won't let something this petty get in the way,' Regulus pleaded.

They looked at each other, both considering hugging, but then they backed away.

'Of course we are brothers, Reg.' Sirius smiled faintly.

'Regulus?'

A concerned voice, maybe the only one he would ever let interrupt something like this, caught his hearing.

He turned around, seeing Charlotte there. His face lit up, suddenly wearing the big, unreserved smile again. She was the friend he needed in his brother She taught him everything there was to know about feelings – she had allowed him to talk about his feelings about his brother, any moment they were alone and they both still pretended it was plainly hypothetical feelings.

'Charlie?'

She was the one who had encouraged him to speak to his brother if he would meet him, instead of continuing to run away. Talking to his brother now gave him a peace within, and he almost felt like hugging her, which he never had before.

He could hear his brother's steps as Sirius walked away.


	5. To remember the future

**Chapter five: To remember the future**

_A/N: Hi. Here's a new, slightly messy chapter... but I hope you'll like it for what it is. Read and review, people. (:_

_

* * *

_

'Oh, and speaking of bribing Edgar Clogg for the next match, should you really be eating all that chocolate?' Regulus asked Charlotte, throwing a home-embroidered pillow at her.

'Are you saying I'm fat?'

'No, I'm saying it's not good for you. And you're actually skinny.'

'Am not! I weigh more than you, grasshopper. I'm also much, much older than you, not to mention a hand taller and a lot smarter.'

'I have more muscles!'

'No, you don't.'

'Do too!'

They were sitting in the Slytherin common room, as usual. It was mostly empty, since only the two first years were left there, it being a Hogsmeade weekend. She didn't complain, though: a couple of Regulus friends in the fourth year had promised to bring him some sweets from the sweet shop, and Charlotte intended to eat at least half of it.

'So. Three weeks until we leave Hogwarts. Are you sure you really want me to stay with your family? Because I don't want to... you know, intrude on anything.'

'I told you, they'll all love you... except for possibly Sirius.'

'Well, I did kick him in... you know, by magic. Um, twice.'

'Oh. Well, he's trying to escape the house the holidays any road... but Cissy and her sister will be there. You'll like them.'

'Well, your family seems to dislike your brother-'

'Sshh!' he whispered quickly, trying to cover her mouth with his hand but not sitting close enough to reach it.

'-so I guess I like your family.'

'Oh. There you are.'

There was Narcissa again, and Charlotte was a bit surprised to see her alone. She always seemed to be with her friends, except for when she, for some reason was around Regulus and Charlotte.

'What did I do?' Regulus said, a bit nervously.

'Not _you_. Scarlett here,' Narcissa said, extra slowly to make sure that Regulus actually understood what she said. When Charlotte glanced at her, she looked pale and tired, but then it might just be the lack of her usual make-up. Her hair also looked somehow flatter in an unflattering way

'Charlotte,' Regulus squeaked.

'Same thing. I have a message for her. She's supposed to meet the headmaster and Professor Slughead in … well, ten minutes.'

'Um, I don't like being talked about in third person, but okay. I'll be there.'

Charlotte put on her shoes that she had taken off, carefully ran her fingers through her hair that was composed in her new favourite style: a side-parted plait that slightly and corrected her posture.

'I'll see you at dinner, Reg.'

'You wouldn't know where the headmaster's office is, would you?' Narcissa asked her, sighing demonstratively over having to show Charlotte, but still not waiting for the answer. 'Of course not. Lovely. Well, follow me.'

Narcissa's brisk steps were almost hard for Charlotte to follow despite not being that much shorter, but it had the benefit of taking almost no time at all to get there.

Professor Dumbledore was waiting outside of the entrance to his office, but Professor Slughorn was nowhere to be seen.

'You wanted to speak to me, Professor?'

'Miss Brown. How nice to see you. Miss Black, wonderful to see you, again. I hope this wasn't too much to ask for you. Two points to Slytherin to compensate for stealing your time. Come, Miss Brown, I have business to discuss with you.'

Narcissa put her head up high, nodded and turned around and to start walking back to the dungeons in a nearly military-like motion.

Professor Dumbledore had opened the entrance and welcomed her into his office while she had followed Narcissa's steps with her gaze.

She followed the headmaster and took, once again, her place in a nicely bum-fitting chair, one leg crossed over the other (although it wasn't very visible under her robe). Professor Dumbledore himself took place in a high, narrow armchair clad in an emerald green fabric.

'Do I have to take a new potion?' she asked anxiously. She didn't like the idea of changing her personality once more, when she had found friends on account of the one she had now.

'No, I have to speak to you about your friend.'

'Regulus?'

'No. When I first met you, you mentioned a Ravenclaw prefect, and I thought that she must have been attacked by a monster in the Chamber of Secrets.'

'The monster, Professor. It's a basilisk. I think it travels around the castle – not now, of course, but when it does – in the pipes, and that's why a friend of mine could hear it... because he's a Parseltongue.'

'A Parseltongue? Oh dear.'

'What, Professor?'

'Parseltongues tend to be... well, evil.'

'I know that, Professor, but Harry would never hurt someone. Well, he has accidentally killed a dark wizard... even almost twice... but he didn't mean to!'

'Really? His name is Harry, you say?'

'Yes. But he isn't evil! But, well, Penelope. The Ravenclaw prefect, Penelope Clearwater. I don't know where she went.'

'I think I do, Miss Brown. I am fairly sure that I've found her.'

'Where?'

'Well, the question isn't "where?", but "when?" and the answer is... the middle of the beginning of the twentieth century. At Hogwarts.'

'Have you spoken to her? Um, did you speak to her, then? Did you meet her?'

'Yes... and although she didn't know much, she told me some things. Like how a boy in your school, the same year the attacks started, set off a snake after another student by speaking Parseltongue...'

'Oh, well... as I said, he didn't _mean_ to.'

'Maybe, Miss Brown, we should have a conversation about your friend Harry... Because there is a slight prejudice among the wizarding world that Parseltongues are evil, and …'

'The wizard Harry accidentally defeated at the age of one was Voldemort, Professor. The second time he did it, he was nearly twelve, and he fought You-Know-Who to stop him from getting the Philosopher's Stone, and with the help of a couple of friends, he managed it, but only because he wanted the Stone for completely unselfish reasons. I understand that you cannot know certain things about the future, but if you are trying to suggest that Harry is evil, _I _would suggest that you'd stop.'

Professor Dumbledore carefully looked at her and nodded.

'I trust you, Miss Brown. Please tell me about your future. Do you know anyone from this present, then?

'Only a handful of teachers... like you and Professor McGonagall, and... well, Severus.'

'Mr Snape?'

'Yes, that would be him.'

'He is a brilliant young man... I do hope he isn't a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher? Because we have a habit of wear them out after a year... and he shows so much potential.'

'No, he's the Potions Master.'

'Oh, well.' The headmaster shook his head and rose up to walk back and forth in the room, humming to himself while thinking. 'Tea?'

Hermione (thinking about her other life had made her feel less connected to the Charlotte version of herself) could feel the cold that seeped in from outside, even if it only was something she imagined, so she nodded politely, repeating the answer with a 'yes, please' when she realised he didn't look at her.

...

How could she had known his name was Lupin?

Oh, his bag of course. She quickly smiled at Ron, hoping he would just blame her knowing the scruffy-looking man's name on her usual brilliance. The first September: she had been back for about five months, only to find a strong reminder of her other life in a compartment on the Hogwarts Express. Brilliant.

And Sirius Black had escaped from prison. Coincidence? She should have to speak to the headmaster about it. Should she try to … contact him? No. She had managed to go on two months without speaking to Severus – Professor Snape, she reminded herself – and she hadn't met anyone else after coming back.

She could, however, recall the meeting with the Malfoys a year ago. They must have known. She hadn't, obviously.

Ron asked her what he would teach.

'That's obvious. There's only one vacancy, isn't there? Defense Against the Dark Arts,' she answered. It did kind of make sense, from what she had learned about him.

'Well, I hope he's up to it. He looks like one good hex would finish him off, doesn't he? Anyway...'

Ron again. She couldn't exactly tell him that he'd once been a part of a group with the most spoiled brats in Hogwarts' history, and that they did a great deal in destroying other people's social lives with their little spells.

Harry started explaining to them what he'd been told. That Sirius Black was after him. Something just didn't make sense. Sirius Black wanting Harry dead, for the sake of You-Know-Who?

It hadn't been that Black brother who'd joined the Death Eaters.

'Sirius Black escaped to come after _you_? Oh, Harry… you'll have to be really, really careful. Don't go looking for trouble, Harry…'

She tried not to think about it. She had seen Sirius Black's tricks to people she cared about while he still was a dumb, naive bully, and she didn't want to see them on people she cared about now that he was a clever, bitter murderer.

She was scared. Not because she had read about Sirius Black (she couldn't just call him Black in her head when _her_ Black was Regulus) but because she had experienced him. She wasn't surprised that he had turned out like that.

'No one knows how he got out of Azkaban,' said Ron uncomfortably. 'No one's ever done it before. And he was a top-security prisoner too.'

'But they'll catch him, won't they?' said Hermione earnestly. 'I mean, they've got all the Muggles looking out for him too…'

She didn't feel at all comfortable talking about Sirius Black in front of Lupin, and was even grateful when an annoying sound took Ron's attention and they all changed subject, chatting as if they weren't directly threatened by a mad murderer.

Then they started talking about Hogsmeade, and she felt a small happy feeling in her stomach that might have been caused by nostalgia.

'Do you know much about Hogsmeade?' she asked keenly. 'I've read it's the only entirely non-Muggle settlement in Britain —'

Well, she had. She had also spent some of the best days of her other life there, but that was a bit harder to explain.

'Yeah, I think it is,' said Ron in an offhand sort of way, 'but that's not why I want to go. I just want to get inside Honeydukes!'

''What's that?' said Hermione. Talking about Hogsmeade made her just as nervous as it made her happy, and she wasn't supposed to know about a shop like that.

'It's this sweetshop,' said Ron, his facial expression matching what she felt about the shop, 'where they've got _everything_… Pepper Imps — they make you smoke at the mouth — and great fat Chocoballs full of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, and really excellent sugar quills, which you can suck in class and just look like you're thinking what to write next–'

'But Hogsmeade's a very interesting place, isn't it?' she continued, wanting to talk about things she didn't have to pretend to not know about. 'In _Sites of Historical Sorcery _it says the inn was the headquarters for the 1612 goblin rebellion, and the Shrieking Shack's supposed to be the most severely haunted building in Britain —'

'– and massive sherbet balls that make you levitate a few inches off the ground while you're sucking them,' said Ron, mentioning all those new kinds of wizard sweets that had been invented after her days there.

She looked at Harry, who was surprisingly quiet, and after she asked him about it, he revealed he wasn't allowed to go. Immediately, Ron started coming up with ways to let Harry go there, but Hermione put a stop to it.

'Ron! I don't think Harry should be sneaking out of the school with Black on the loose —'

She couldn't explain that what they had read in the Daily Prophet only was a part of why she knew that Sirius Black was insane, and she argued against Ron once more on the subject.

'Black's already murdered a whole bunch of people in the middle of a crowded street, do you really think he's going to worry about attacking Harry just because _we're _there?'

To prove that she was right, she also let out her new, fluffy cat, which caused them to change subject again.


	6. Technically, Toast

**Chapter six: Toast, technically**

She had felt the tingling feeling in her stomach every once in a while, and after weighing the two most likely theories (hormones or a cancer tumour) she realised that her puberty had hit her like a train... the French fast ones, not an old-fashioned one like the Hogwarts Express (even though she had a suspicion that the Hogwarts Express went even faster than those fancy modern ones... especially since she was pretty sure that the French high-speed trains hadn't been invented yet).

The first week of December, she could proudly announce to anyone that would listen that she was five centimetres taller than when they had started in September, and for the few people that were so anti-muggles that they hadn't ever bothered to get used to the metric system, she could tell her that she was taller than sixty-five inches, though she said it like 'five and sixty' to make fun of their antique manners.

Watching her new idol, Narcissa Black, flirt with all those poor, clueless boys became all of sudden very entertaining, and not for the humourical value. 'Well, I had my Prefect badge fixed. Now it says "perfect".'

She couldn't exactly mention this to Regulus (he was a boy) and she wasn't sure that Elena would understand the harder words (such as 'vibes') if she tried to tell her, and somehow she felt a sinking feeling in her stomach that if she had been back in the future she could have talked to her friends about it...

No, she could never have done that, not with Ron and Harry. They might be able to save the world, but they would never understand puberty. Coincidentally, she might be awfully clever, but she didn't understand much of the puberty logic either.

'Why did you mumble "pretty... pretty" in your sleep?' Vanya Wenlock, her fellow dormitory mate, asked her one morning when Charlotte let her borrow a hairbrush before breakfast.

'I had a nightmare about unicorns,' she answered simply. 'Don't ask me stupid questions before I've had toast. Toast is very vital. Hand me the brush.'

Vanya, who was finished brushing her hair, rolled her eyes and threw the brush at her. Her hair wasn't thoroughly brushed through, but Charlotte doubted that the dark brown, massive curls would ever seem tidy – but Charlotte herself managed to make her formerly bushy hair seem nearly curly and organised when she plaited it in a style that when done right didn't even give off vibes of Marie Antoinette or nineteenth century prostitute.

'It didn't seem very horrible, seeing as you smiled.'

'Well, it was a unicorn.' She fought a bit with the brush to make it slide smoothly through her hair. A hundred streaks and it would be fine. 'They give off positive rays of … happiness. It didn't mean it wasn't a nightmare. Haven't you ever dreamt of something nice?'

'Of course I do. My dreams mostly feature myself as a kind of important character. I'm nice.' Vanya put a rainbow-coloured braid at the top of her head around her hair, making it look like a big bonbon. 'Like kissing people, like your friend's older Gryffindor brother, or being chased by a big metal thing – a gar? - in a land of other metal gars, running on hard, stone-like thing... or being powerful and very intelligent... but no, that's reality.'

'Getting lost in a car park?' Charlotte suggested. 'So you're scared of Muggles. Big deal. They're weird, but you don't really have to fear them. It's like lions. They fear us more than we fear them, except for when we've taken them close to us and made them okay with our presence, then they're dangerous. That's why we can't ever interfere with regular Muggle life. That, and that they have stupid sweets. No magic whatsoever.'

'You _really_ need toast,' Vanya said, tied her black trainers and leaned demonstratively against the stone wall. 'Ready?'

'Coming.'

The were the last ones to leave the dormitory, since the other girls had left for breakfast or the library or whatever they were up to a while ago. Charlotte hurried to tie her green and grey basket shoes and swiftly followed Vanya, who (like everyone else but Regulus, it seemed) was taller and faster than Charlotte.

In the Great Hall, she pushed Arkie aside so that she could place herself next to Regulus, and started talking about a new book she had read on Quidditch techniques, written by Kennilworthy Whisp.

His dark hair was dripping, and she took a napkin to wipe off the cold, melting snow that splattered over her. He tried very enthusiastically cutting a toast with an apparently dull knife that Charlotte recognised as a fork, but she had too much fun watching him to correct his mistake.

'Did you have a snowball fight?' she asked him, even though she found it unlikely (which sane person would get up extra early in the morning just to be extra frozen all day?), but he shook his head.

'No, only Peeves, and you missed the post,' he told her. 'But I took care of it.'

He pointed at an envelope that someone had put a juice carafe on, and she wiped off the round circle of juice that together with the green ink that said 'Charlotte Brown, Slytherin table, Hogwarts' made a nice vomit colour, on Regulus' already soggy shoulder before turning the envelope and finding it to be sealed with a green crest, with two dancing dogs, two stars and a sword.

'Ou, d ay eed ou do do omdin or mey,' Regulus said suddenly, with almost a whole toast in his mouth.

She stared at him blankly. 'Sorry?'

He tried to swallow the whole toast, and in doing so he caused his face to turn a not entirely healthy shade of purple, but he managed to gulp it down and repeated his sentence. 'I need you to do something for me.'

'What?' she said, annoyed, as she opened her letter and turned the parchment to read the signature: Mrs Walburga Black, Regulus' mother.

'I need you to ask Elena what she thinks of me,' he said, sounding nervous.

'Ask her what she thinks about her? Oh my Merlin, are you_ twelve_?' She realised that technically, he wasn't older than eleven. 'Um, sure. And the letter's from your mother, thanks for asking.'

'Mother? Oh, no. No. That's... I can't believe she'd do that! What does she write?'

'Um. Long words that look extra pretty about inviting me to your house at Christmas and making sure you behave around their friends.'

'Not... well, not too embarrassing.'

'I should reply to her. Write some long, hard words about how you fancy Elena Dagworth and stuff like that...'

'No, you shouldn't,' he interrupted her hurriedly. 'Besides, I also got post from my mother, an she sent a couple of chocolate frogs that I meant to share with you, but... well, you weren't here, and, it's chocolate, and I ate it... but you can have the card. It's a Dumbledore, nothing special.'

He put it on the white cloth next to her.

She smiled weakly and started eating a toast, eying the card. Professor Dumbledore. She recalled what he had told her, just before she had left his office the day before: 'You must find out who managed to let out Slytherin's heir to open the Chamber of Secrets. I am not quite sure how, and I am even less sure in which era you will have your answer, but you must try.'

She smiled at Regulus, realising exactly what she had to do to find the heir of Slytherin. Or, well, not exactly, but she was pretty sure spending the Christmas with one of the richest and most influential Slytherin families could help her.

However, there was one piece of the puzzle (and she was pretty sure it was one of those puzzles with landscape motives in 2000 pieces of different shades of green) she couldn't seem to remember. She had seen something that could help her find the heir of Slytherin... because it couldn't be Hagrid, even though Harry had said that.

Once she had been sure it couldn't be Hagrid simply because he wasn't evil, but she had learned now that being a Slytherin wasn't being evil. It was just being a little more reckless and a little more fun, and being evil had nothing to do with it. Sirius Black and his friends were the perfect example of people she was ashamed to share species with.

She quickly ate two slices of toast together with a glass of juice and a small cup of coffee, searching the table for Arkie, Severus or Vanya who were the first people she thought of in her own class, since she was ready to head for the double Transfiguration hour, but they were all quicker eaters then she was (or had possibly not slept half an hour extra), because as the tables were starting to empty and the majority of people left were teachers or students that hadn't passed their O.W.L.s in some classes, so they had a free hour straight after breakfast.

Heading off alone for the Transfiguration, she walked in a quick pace (probably because she was used walk with people with longer legs than she had), and by not looking, she managed to bump into one of those things you just couldn't bump in to: Rubeus Hagrid, followed by a puppy that looked slightly too big for its features; those of a newborn.

'Hagrid!' she exclaimed, slightly shocked, fighting the urge to hug him (or try to – she wasn't sure that trying to stretch her arms around someone counted when she wouldn't be able to reach properly without three other Hermiones) but quickly backing one and a half steps backwards.

'And yer who?'

'He, eh, Charlotte Brown. Second year, Slytherin.'

'Ah, yer that girl.'

'What girl?' she repeated nervously.

'Yer first-year, but not really.'

'Right. I have to go to my Transfiguration now, so...'

She left him, walking even faster, and it wasn't until she was comfortably seated and taking notes on the history of mythical Transfiguraters, when it hit her.

Hagrid didn't open the Chamber of Secrets. He couldn't have, he couldn't speak Parseltongue, only Harry could – Harry, and whoever had opened the Chamber of Secrets.


	7. To sneak and steal

**Chapter seven: To sneak and steal**

December passed quickly for everyone, and when the students couldn't tell night from day any longer due to the snow covering every single window, they only had one week left until Christmas break, and the first days were a surprise Hogsmeade weekend.

Narcissa's smile was distant, and she clearly had something else on her mind, holding a thin parchment envelope in her thin, long fingers and, probably without thinking about it herself, stroking the part where her name and adress was written (Narcissa Black, Hogwarts) in black ink. She had barely touched her plate of eggs, and her coffee was slowly cooling, untouched and abandoned.

She was only interrupted from her daydream-like state of mind when Charlotte sat down next to her and began filling her breakfast plate. Charlotte's hair was wet from sweat and rain, and her nose and cheeks were red from the exercise, but other than that, her face was pale from the cold.

Narcissa put down the letter against her coffee cup, slowly raising her left eyebrow.

'So, you just thought you'd take a swim in a mud puddle?'

'Quidditch practice. Where are the rest of the Sloane Rangers?'

'The what? Actually, I don't care. Where is _our_ little friend?'

'He decided to take a shower.'

'A wise one, that boy. You should learn from him.'

'Eh-'

Narcissa looked at Charlotte, again, and sipped on her coffee. 'Shouldn't you be spending your time on something more useful than a sport when you're not even a member of the regular team?'

'Oh, I finished all my homework yesterday.'

'Yesterday was a Friday.'

'Yeah?'

'Friday equals fun!' Narcissa said, half frustrated. 'You're supposed to relax and Thank Merlin It's Friday and get drunk with your mates in your dormitory or-'

'Not if you're twelve, um, thirteen,' Charlotte said. 'What's that letter? Did you get into some kind of higher education to become... I dunno, rich and pretty?'

'No. Oh, no, it's nothing. I got a letter, that's all,' she said, distracted. 'Oh well. Eat something. You don't look like you're starving, exactly, but you really should eat something. You should also start getting at least nine hours of sleep per night, since, apparently, you're not using them wisely anyways.'

Charlotte shook her head. 'I suppose that was meant as a … compliment?'

'A well-meant tip, love.'

'And by "wisely" you mean what, exactly?'

'Well, you're just studying all the time. By "wisely", I mean "in a way that is educational in the street smart way, and not the book smart way" and also "more fun than watching paint dry",' she said in her perkiest voice in what was probably an imitation of a character in a film, Charlotte thought, but then again, it didn't seem very probable, seeing as she didn't believe that Narcissa even knew what a film_ was_.

'Like writing love letters?' Charlotte teased.

'Obviously not. I do, however, have to go right now, seeing as I'm going to Hogsmeade today.'

'Not with your friends?'

'No. I'm _meeting s_omeone.'

'A boy?'

'Obviously not. I couldn't very well waste my only socialisation with the outer world on people that are still in school, could I? It is, however, a nice young_ man_.'

'Is that why you haven't eaten anything, and why you're acting like Christmas arrived a bit early?'

'It has nothing to do with the letter!' Narcissa snapped, rose from the table and went out from the Great Hall.

Charlotte found Vanya sitting alone a couple of metres away, and she quickly pushed her plate closer to Vanya's. 'Is it very hard to break into someone else's dormitory?'

The problem with 'breaking' into Narcissa's dormitory wasn't the breaking part, which wasn't really a problem at all, but rather finding the room. As Vanya reluctantly had told her, the many corridors in the Slytherin part of the dungeon worked as a kind of non-magical test; if you weren't good enough to find the room, you weren't good enough to enter, either. Legend also had it, Vanya explained, that there were a lot of small libraries, luxurious bathrooms, small rooms where you could drink tea with friends (though those chiffon couches in front of warm had probably been used for a handful of other things, too) and, though it was apparently very well-hidden, a room filled with chocolate.

The long corridors were cold and slightly damp, but still warmer than some of the classrooms that weren't situated in the dungeons, but when she met two seventh year boys (who clearly needed to sort out their priorities – who wanted to study when they could do exactly that and nothing else when classes ended six days later?) she stopped them.

'Excuse me, has anyone here ever been where Narcissa Black sleeps?'

The two boys looked at each other, and one of them, a dark-skinned boy with short hair and a rather large nose, nodded.

'Been there, done that... both of us, actually.'

'That is extremely disrespectful!' she said sharply. 'Not only are you telling me in a very rude and tasteless manner that you've, well, um, _been_ with her, you're saying that _you_ have been with_ her_, which is of course not very likely and also, in your dreams.'

Very, very intelligent, she thought herself. She hadn't let her large mouth and overly critical opinions just destroy everything like this in a while, and she regretted that it had happened when she really, really could use the help given, rude or not. In fact, she couldn't remember if it had happened once during her time being Charlotte, and it was very likely that the potions she'd drank with Professor Dumbledore were slowly wearing off by now, and that must have been exactly why she, who knew a couple of very effective counter spells but not a lot of hexes and was completely, had managed to piss two older students who, without a doubt, knew a lot of hexes and curses, things they hadn't learned in class, but from their older peers.

'Really?' he said, and looking at her as if he was trying to slowly carve a lightning-shaped scar into her forhead (though that might just have been her imagination). 'Isn't it a bit dis-res-pect-ful to say that kind of thing, Nott? Is she _really _getting away with saying things like this?'

She felt unable to move as the other boy, who was apparently called Nott took a step forward, standing only a foot away from her. He rose his wand, and only began to mumble a spell ('Optim-') before he was hit by a red flash of light.

'Expelliarmus!'

'Merlin, Snape,' said the first boy. 'He was only doing an Octimus Octopus spell, we found it very, ahem, entertaining that there actually still exist firsties that are afraid of us just because we're older. We were _kidding_.' The twoo boys now showed two identical smiles, but Severus didn't give them any back.

Charlotte hadn't noticed how hard her heart had been beating, but realised that it was returning to its normal pace. 'I'm not a_ firstie_. And I'm actually quite in a hurry, I've looking for something and I only have the whole day to do it. And since you were only going to insult my, ehem, friend of a friend, I'll find it on my own, thank you very much.'

She turned around and tried to storm off, walking in a corridor where a blueish phosphorescent light seemed to shine from the stones itself, though she couldn't exactly see the light, or the stones, or anything, but when she checked her own hand to confirm the colour, it was a ghostly turquoise shade of blue.

Appearing in front of her was all of sudden a large door made out of silver, marked 'Year Seven Girls'.

'Bingo,' she murmured to herself.

She opened the door that, judging from its weight, seemed to be out of massive concrete (this was, in fact, a slight miscalculation from her side; the door was made out of massive oak), and entered the room.

The octagon-shaped dormitory, the size of a small commercial centre, was covered in white sheets and emerald green chiffon, green rugs and a couple of couches. The walls were made out of stone, here too, but the stone was more even, and looked more like the fine, marble walls in the rest of the castle, instead of the greyer, rougher stone that covered most of the dungeons. While she was amazed by the room, she also felt slightly nervous, as if someone could catch her red-handed any minute.

The trunks were all situated by the eight beds, and next to each bed there was desk and a wardrobe. The desks were covered in a lot of stuff: the only desk that wasn't a complete mess contained a book and a piece of parchment, the other ones were untidy. Looking at the different girls' parts of the room, she saw that each girl had made her piece unique. One had an empty owl cage and a horrible, brown rug, and her bed had probably not been made all year. Another one, the one with a tidy desk, had books lying in three neat, equally large piles next to the bed, and the bed was not only made, but it looked like nobody had slept in it all year.

In the middle of the room, there was three large, green sofas, each one different in shape and shade of green and they were placed in a triangle with a small table made out of dark wood in the middle. Over the table, a sphere of purple flames was slowly orbiting around another, smaller, green sphere.

She quickly looked at the other beds, but they didn't look very much like the kind Narcissa would sleep in, so the really tidy place was her best guess. The piece of parchment was the letter she'd received earlier this morning, and all of sudden, it struck Charlotte that this mission had gone a bit too smoothly. She walked across the weirdly warm stone floor, and stroke her hand absent-mindedly over the soft fabric of the couch.

The parchment looked wrinkled and old, even though she'd seen it with her own eyes arriving this morning. She could feel her heart beating hard, and when she picked it up, she heard a soft sound from behind her. She turned around, but saw nothing.

Three seconds later, the two spheres were somehow screaming.

She froze, and ran to the entrance, holding the letter against her chest, hidden under her arm, if anyone were to check to see what the horrible noise was.

The second she stepped outside the room, the enormous door shut close and, and all of sudden everything was quiet. She wasn't sure the spheres had stopped yelling, but the massive door didn't let even a single sound pass into the corridor, where she found herself, sweaty from nerves and cold from the chill that now spread through her body and possibly also through the dark space.

She returned hurriedly to her own dormitory, and opened the letter when she was safe in her own bed.

'Dear Miss Black,' (_So, obviously it's not a love letter_, she though to herself) 'We have the great honour to inform you that you have been accepted to the Chaldean Academy of Arithmancy, home of the finest arithmancers since thousands of years.

Your talent and devotion to Gematria and Isopsephy have been noted, and we offer you a decennium where you will have the opportunity to study under the masters of the Academy, who are a part of the tradition that has given us every great arithmancer the world has seen.

You will also be given classes in Ancient Greek and Arabic, as well as modern Latin.

We hope to receive your answer and tuition before the first of May.

Master E. Wycliffe.'

She put down the letter. She wasn't too surprised: Narcissa was, after all, one of the cleverest girls at Hogwarts. (She did wonder about the very English sounding name of the person who'd sent the letter, if the school was somewhere near Babylon, however.) But the letter not being very shocking was exactly what had surprised her; why had Narcissa wanted to hide this?

She tried to think, quickly, and the only thing she could think of was how annoying she found it not being able to think. She didn't want to be stupid – a small part longed to be scarily intelligent, which she remembered having been... then, in the future.

She really missed certain parts of her old personality. But she'd chosen a new one, hadn't she? One that wasn't obnoxiously annoying, one that didn't make people around her dislike her because every once in a while she cared too much.

Now she was close to perfect, wasn't she?

Well. She did consider her a fairly close friend to Narcissa, even though she wasn't sure Narcissa actually considered anyone her friend.

Closing the letter again with care, she walked through the Common Room into Regulus' room and waited a while for him there. Apparently, he'd spent a really long time in the shower, as he was still wet and remarkably clean when he entered the room, clothed in a blue sweater and brown corduroy pants and even white socks (she'd never seen his socks that clean, either). His face lit up in a childish smile when he saw her, and his cheeks were still pink.

'Look what I happened to find in Narcissa's carefully hid and alarmed dormitory!' she said excitedly and waved the letter in his face, as he sat down next to her in the bed.

'What's that?' he asked, his voice less cheerful than his face had been seconds before, and his smile slowly fading.

'Well, you see, Narcissa got a letter this morning, and I just supposed it was a love letter because she seemed really excited, and you know, for once I don't want to be, well, socially retarded, and I really wanted to know who'd written it, and she wouldn't tell me. And then I kind of accidentally stole the letter, because I happened to find it there. And, well, you see... she's accepted to this grand school in like Mesopotamia or something. For her studies in Arithmancy! Brilliant, don't you think?'

Regulus stared at her nonplussed. 'You stole her letter?' he asked slowly.

'Yeah, you see-' she started, but he cut her of.

'It is her private business! You can't read it, that's like a rule!' he protested. 'Especially if you only want to give her a bad reputation in our world – like someone who's had too many boyfriends or-'

'You only care about losing house points anyway, and it's not likely she'll take any away from you. Anyways, it's not like you want to care about rules. You do it, just because you want people to like you, but that's not even a real rule!'

'You know what? Rules are made to be broken, because they're stupid and silly. But unwritten rules are meant to be followed – otherwise you'll be ridiculed. Unwritten rules like "don't tell on your best friends". But you know what? Maybe I should start breaking all kinds of rules. Cause you don't do that. You do not take someone's letter and read it when it's meant to be private. Do you know why our world has survived? Wizards know how to keep secrets, by using magic and rules. And even if the unwritten rules are meant to be followed, but not all written rules are made to be broken.'

He'd stood up and appeared taller than usual, and he looked angry. She didn't quite know why, but every Black family member she'd seen was completely terrifying when angry, and despite him usually being something of her little puppy, Regulus wasn't an exception right now.

'Calm down,' she asked him and gave him the letter. 'Why do you even care? We're not in the eighteen hundreds any more, she can have a reputation of something other than a boring, completely virginal madonna, you see?'

(She thought for a second, and she was quite sure that neither the Wizarding world nor the Muggles knew anything about a certain, anything but virginal Madonna yet, and they wouldn't until almost a decade later.)

'You don't see, do you?' he asked slowly, the redness of his face that had suddenly appeared before now slowly fading away. 'There's a conflict coming. I know it. And it's not that I'm grown up and less naïve than I've always been, but they've been talking about it. There are movements of people, and they want to clean our society from people that don't belong, and they know that other people will stand against the same movement. And while you will never face this problem, other families will: they survive only barely, generation by generation, and now, they know that in a while, we'll have a big conflict. And people might die, and people may not. And they're already planning on how to survive. They're marrying and having babies quicker than ever before. And that's why things that aren't important become really, really important. My cousin Andromeda betrayed our family out of fear that she wouldn't have the time to live her life unless she did it now.'

She looked at him. He was right: he was still a naïve, small boy, and she hadn't expected him to be able to speak like this. His voice was still a young boy's, and she didn't want him to turn this cynical already (and he didn't even know half the things she knew about the war-to-come, because Charlotte Brown was the only person in the world who knew, and for that, she might also be the most important person in the war-to-come).

'I see,' she said, and silenced hovered over them for a while. 'I'll give Narcissa her letter back. I'll even ask for her forgiveness or something. And I'll never mention the academy again. Or any of her boyfriends. I promise.'

The cold silence between them didn't leave until they both decided to go down for lunch.

* * *

_A/N: Yeah, I decided to try do continue this fanfic. Again. Comments will be loved. :)_


	8. To drink tea and gossip

**Chapter eight: To drink tea and gossip**

When the last week had passed by, the last foot after foot of snow had taken its rightful place on the ground, and the trunks had been packed, there was nothing left for Regulus and Charlotte to do but to board the Hogwarts Express train in the morning and arrive in London just in time for tea.

Regulus, Charlotte and Sirius were all perfectly happy to he forced to hold hands and walk behind Narcissa, who hadn't said a word to Charlotte since the letter had been returned to its rightful owner and Charlotte had mumbled a nervous 'sorry'.

'So, children.' Narcissa's face was void of all emotion except something that made her look quite like an ice queen, or like Charlotte's mental image of Galadriel. 'You know how to do it, and it is not my bloody fault that I have to walk with you, so behave yourself, or else. I'm seventeen and perfectly allowed to perform magic on you. Walk.'

Charlotte held the two brother's hands in her own, and she could feel her own hands losing colour from how she held them with almost cramp-like strength. 'Let go of me,' Sirius hissed, trying to tug away his hand from her grip.

Regulus, however, was just as afraid of the cars as she was. Narcissa looked at them for a moment and then she rolled her eyes. 'Okay, children. Stop.'

'But we're right in the middle of the-'

'Belt up. You two, stand her until I return, okay? Sirius, take my hand,' she commanded and looked very pleased at the fact that she was wearing gloves. After walking into an alley where nobody could see them, she nodded at Sirius and they disappeared with a small sound.

Regulus and Charlotte looked at each other, and they quickly let their hands go.

'She shouldn't call us children,' Charlotte remarked. 'She's not that much older than us.'

'She's an adult and she's a genius. She, um, deserves our respect?' Regulus mumbled.

She made a perfect imitation of Narcissa's eye rolling, just as Narcissa appeared before them again.

'So. Do you want to go together?' she asked them.

'Yes,' they answered in unison.

Charlotte closed her eyes and took Regulus' and Narcissa's hands in hers, and when they'd Apparated into a large hallway Charlotte didn't recognise, the first thing she did, was to accidentally threw up into an umbrella stand made out of a troll leg.

When she had done that, she actually noticed how very old-fashioned the house looked. She'd never been inside a real wizard house, and while she'd already imagined one to be slightly less modern than the muggle houses were in the seventies, this house looked very Victorian, albeit possibly _late_ Victorian. The high ceiling and the slightly dim light did add to the expression, even though Charlotte hadn't seen a light brigth enough to actually make her eyes hurt since September, when the sun actually didn't shy away from them at any possible moment.

'Five points from your face,' Narcissa muttered to her before removing her green coat and giving it to a house elf who looked at her amazed and said 'Miss Narcissa!'

Sheasked the elf, without waiting for an answer, 'Is my mother here?' and hurried up to the first floors by the stairs in the other end of the hallway.

'I think they're having tea, now, in the drawing room. It's upstairs,' Regulus said.

'Well, allons-y then,' Charlotte said, and, not quite knowing what to do, gave the house elf her jacket as well.

They could clearly hear voices coming from the stairways, and Regulus looked confused for a second. 'I didn't know we were having guests. But, yeah, let's go.'

'That's what I said, but, um, in French.'

'I didn't know you speak French.'

'Si.'

'Well, just come on then.'

They walked through the hallway and passed the stairs, and as they entered the equally Victorian drawing room, Hermione found herself, for the first and second time of her lives, face to face with a certain Lucius Malfoy.

"Well, well, well — Arthur Weasley."

It was Mr Malfoy. He stood with his hand on Draco's shoulder, sneering in just the same way.

"Lucius," said Mr Weasley, nodding coldly.

"Busy time at the Ministry, I hear," said Mr Malfoy. "All those raids… I hope they're paying you overtime?"

He reached into Ginny's cauldron and extracted, from amid the glossy Lockhart books, a very old, very battered copy of _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_.

"Obviously not," Mr Malfoy said. "Dear me, what's the use of being a disgrace to the name of wizard if they don't even pay you well for it?"

Mr Weasley flushed darker than either Ron or Ginny.

"We have a very different idea of what disgraces the name of wizard, Malfoy," he said.

"Clearly," said Mr Malfoy, his pale eyes straying to Mr and Mrs Granger, who were watching apprehensively. "The company you keep, Weasley… and I thought your family could sink no lower."

Somehow his eyes caught Hermione's face a second extra, and she could see that he seemed to draw some kind of conclusion between her face and her painfully obvious Muggle parents.

And that was when Ron's dad and Mr Malfoy started fighting, and Hermione was left with a nauseous feeling that he recognised her somehow from some place.

'Regulus!' a large woman, with the same dark hair as him, nearly shouted when they entered the room, whose most prominent feature was a huge family tree. 'Come here, darling!' She took him into her arms and Charlotte could have sworn that she heard one or two of his bones breaking from her gigantic hug. 'And this is your friend, Charlotte?'

'Yes, mother, it's Charlotte,' he said when she'd finally released him. 'Everyone, Charlotte, Charlotte everyone, that's to say...' (he started pointing at the different friends and family members in the room) '… My mother, my father,' (a small, grey-haired man who was busy smoking his pipe and chattering with another man), 'my uncle Cygnus and aunt Druella, and their daughters, um, Bella and – well, you do know Narcissa – and there's...'

'Hello, dear,' a blonde woman who was sitting in a deep green sofa said and smiled. 'I am Francesca Malfoy, and this is my husband, Abraxas. This is our son, Lucius.'

She stared at the blond boy for an unnaturally long time. He was pretty, more than his future son and a lot prettier than his future self, and he looked younger than she would have expected from someone who she supposed must have been out of Hogwarts for some years. Having already seen him in the future, she had expected his face to be more angular, but it wasn't. He neither looked at her nor smiled, but she was perfectly happy with this, as she hoped he hadn't noticed her staring.

'Now, when everyone's here, I think we shall all need a good cup of tea,' Regulus' mother told the rest of the company. 'The tea is simply the most splendid thing I've ever had the pleasure to drink in many years.

'Not everyone's here,' Sirius said.

His mother looked at him, but didn't say anything, and the silence fell over the room.

'What is he talking about?' Charlotte asked Regulus in a whisper, pulling his arm to get his attention.

'Nothing,' he whispered back quickly.

'Aunt Walburga, he's talking about my fiancé, but he simply couldn't be here tonight,' the dark-haired witch next to Narcissa said. 'He had a very important meeting with... well, you all know who.'

Not for the first time, Charlotte felt like having two sets of emotions at the same time. The Charlotte part of her was simply amazed by this wonderful Bellatrix Black, who looked a lot like a less lady-like, more powerful version of her sister Narcissa, and the other part of her, the one she tried to hide to herself, was telling her that there was someone, in this room, talking casually about the worst wizard of modern times.

While the six older people in the company had their tea in the small group of green sofas, the younger ones gathered together Narcissa, who only seemed to be interested in talking to her sister. Having taken a seat in an old, light pink armchair, she was given a cup of tea from Sirius.

Narcissa and Bellatrix, who were seated together in a small, pink sofa, were talking this date that Bellatrix' fiancé was going to.

'Actually, you should try to learn more about it, Ciss. The Dark Lord is gathering people and I should have been there, right now, but seeing as time travel is highly difficult, I can't exactly be at two places at once, can I?'

'But what does he _do_?' Narcissa asked.

Lucius Malfoy answered, 'The Dark Lord wants a wizarding world where wizards can live without threats from the muggles and those who want to defend the muggles. We live in an enormous world, an enormous country, and still there's only a couple of thousands of wizards and witches. He feels that we should try to defend ourselves, not willingly become extinct because we couldn't be bothered to fight back. We're losing our world bit by bit, and it has just accelerated since we lost India.'

'Really?' Sirius said and rolled his eyes. Charlotte said nothing, but sipped on her tea until there wasn't any left.

'Yes, why?' Young Malfoy asked him, eyebrows raised.

'Because that's just utter crap,' the older Black brother responded. 'We wouldn't die out if we tried to marry muggles, instead, we'd have more children because there could be up to twice as many parents, and that way-'

'But we wouldn't want that, would we?' interrupted Bellatrix. 'Muggles aren't like normal human beings. The Dark Lord do have some quiet interesting thoughts on that, as a matter of facts. I will show you something, and don't be overly impressed, okay?'

She put down her own tea cup in Narcissa's lap (and manage to spill it all over her light blue dress), and cleared her underarms from her deep purple dress, and showed them a light red tattoo on her left arm. 'Isn't it lovely? I was the first one to get one – _He_ needed someone to test it on, and I volunteered!' Her smile was the widest one Charlotte had ever seen.

'What _is_ that?'

'It's the Dark Mark. We use it to communicate with the Lord,' Bellatrix said cheerfully.

'Why don't you just use phones?' Charlotte asked.

'What?'

'Um, nothing, it's a muggle thing, you see, and it's because they have special needs but...' Charlotte mumbled hurriedly.

'But, Bella? Isn't this whole "Dark Lord" and "Dark Mark" thing... I mean, doesn't it all sound a bit, um, evil?' Regulus asked nervously.

Bellatrix let the dress cover her tattoo again. 'There's no such thing as evil, my dear Reg. You see, there's the power, and then there are people who have to many fears to actually seek it. I have no fear, and neither does the Dark Lord.'

Narcissa added, 'Me, on the other hand, I don't seek power. I only want a long and happy life, doing what I like, when I want to do it, and with nobody to decide over me.'

'Oh, Cissy dear, we all know that you're going to marry and have lots of beautiful children,' Bellatrix said.

'No, I don't want that.'

'Really? No family at all? Do you want to die an old spinster?' Lucius Malfoy grinned, and Charlotte picked up something in his voice she didn't like: a very, very flirty hint about Narcissa's affairs with boys, exactly the things that Regulus had forbidden Charlotte to ever talk about. She didn't know what to do about it, so she drank more of the tea that had appeared in her cup again.

'I want to be well-known and respected for my work,' Narcissa said.

'But Cissy, you don't even know how to do anything!'

'Actually, I've been accepted to study ten years at the Chaldean Academy of Arithmancy in Babylon,' she said silently.

'But then you'll miss the glorious days when the movement the Lord has created will finally restore the wizarding world back to how it should be!' Bellatrix complained.

'And that would be for the best,' I suppose.'

'You are wasting your life on being wise and safe,' Bellatrix said, but they left the subject. 'So, Lucius. I haven't seen you in a bit. What have you been doing since Hogwarts?'

'Oh, nothing, Bella. In fact, I have been reading every book in the Malfoy Library – it is such a wonderful place – and now I feel that I am perfectly ready for the challenge that awaits me next autumn.'

'That's nice. Isn't it, Ciss?' said Bellatrix enthusiastically and elbowed her sister in a rather blatant way.

'Lovely,' Narcissa said coldly, and took a sip of her tea.

'Um, I'm sorry, I've had a bit too much tea. Where's the toilet?' asked Charlotte.

'Second last door on the left, you can't miss it,' said Regulus.

She nodded and hurried through the large drawing room, and when she'd closed the door to the toilet and placed herself on top of it, she started hyperventilating.

All in all, she was fucking up time. Yes, she'd met her future Potions master, and she'd met Dumbledore, and she was quite sure that she'd even met Harry's future father (which would certainly have been worse if she'd known any details surrounding the murders of Harry's parents – right now she hadn't even found anyone who could possibly be Harry's future mother).

Lucius Malfoy, though. She didn't like him at all in the future, but now, she was impressed by his class, his charm and how very nice he was, after all.

She supposed that she was going to find Lucius Malfoy's future wife at some point, too, but she wasn't too interested in that, an besides, she had almost ten years to do so.

Smiling to herself, she thought,_ Would it be worth screwing up the timeline just in order to see Draco Malfoy never being born?_

Yes, it would. So much.

Flushing the toilet and washing her hands, to pretend that she'd actually used the toilet, she calmed herself after a while and went to join the others.

However, she couldn't not catch a glimpse of two very blond and very attractive persons in their very late teens snogging against the wall, standing on two of the middle steps.

A teeny, tiny feeling of jealousy made the way through her chest.

A/N:

_Well, well, well. I just felt like explaining to you: in fact, while si is Spanish for yes, it is also French for yes, but in another way. For example, if you ask someone 'You don't like Harry Potter?' and they answer 'yes/oui' it could mean that either they like it, or they don't. But with the French si, it means that 'yes, I DO' and is sort of a correcting word every time a negative question is asked._

_(Yeah, I really suck at explaining.)_

_Comments are always appreciated. :)_


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